Friday, 13 January 2017

Review of Halle Orchestra concert on 12th January 2017

HALLE ORCHESTRA Bridgewater Hall

The main attraction of
the Hallé’s concert under former chief guest conductor Markus Stenz might have
seemed to be the new work for violin and orchestra by Julian Anderson, called
In Lieblicher Bläue, with soloist Carolin Widmann (receiving its first
Manchester performance).

Ingenious though that
was in its construction, theatricality and programmatic content, the abiding thought
about the concert was that it provided a masterclass in orchestral style when
playing Mozart and Schumann.

In Lieblicher Bläue,
inspired by a prose poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, contains some glorious
opportunities for traditional lyrical violin playing, and certainly put the
soloist at the centre of attention, as she began her role off-stage (with a
kind of call-and-response interchange with the orchestra), made her entrance
with a cadenza (somewhat drowned by the accompanying textures, in reality), and
eventually came to a point of disconnection with her fellow-musicians, first
turning her back on the audience and finally playing her plaintive motif in
apparent disregard of the rest of the music.

It’s all related to
imagery in the Hölderlin text, as are other events in the piece such as the
soloist tapping the violin strings with a pencil and rumbling from a
thundersheet. It seemed to me that its rhapsodic nature, with little sense of
rhythmic propulsion, was curiously similar to the sort of music some composers
were writing about 100 years ago, for all its claims to contemporary attention.
The solo itself, almost needless to say, was beautifully played by Carolin
Widmann, herself dressed in lieblicher Bläue.

Before that we heard
Markus Stenz and the Hallé play Mozart as he should be played – Symphony no.
41, with a small band laid out on classical lines (cellos and basses split and
symmetrically either side of the centre), and, more importantly, classical
style in its phrasing, vivid contrasts and awareness of rhetoric.

Some of those
contrasts went way beyond what’s written in the score, but seemed always to be
right, and the violins’ articulation, in particular (with Lyn Fletcher leading)
was a joy. I also loved the balance of voices in the slow movement and the low
growls from those double basses with a fifth string to create them. There were
touches of mystery in the trio section of the Minuet, and the finale surged
along, clear and precisely articulated, but with enough flexibility of pulse to
mark the pivotal surprises in the harmonic plan – and a tiny, thrilled intake
of breath before the amazing multi-contrapuntal coda.

Schumann’s fourth
symphony was a different beast, but again given with supreme authority by a
conductor who knows that it, also, needs creative steering beyond the text on
the page.

Markus Stenz kept the
horns on a tight leash in the first movement, until they were needed for
climactic emphasis, and brought Romantic warmth to the music’s lovely melodies.
Textures were balanced with skill throughout, rhythms were full of vigour, and
the finale delivered extraordinary impact, beginning with a majestic sense of
drama, then building and relaxing tensions again and again towards a
life-affirming climax (and a mad-for-it coda!).